It’s probably a good thing that Walking Shadow Theatre Company has chosen to zoom right through Neil LaBute’s “Reasons to Be Pretty” without an intermission, even if that keeps the audience in its seats for two hours. A break would likely inspire some patrons to spend the second half elsewhere.

But the play’s best writing and the production’s strongest acting arrive over an hour into this acerbic tale. So you may leave the Guthrie’s Dowling Studio contemplating whether a strong finish was worth the trek it took to get there.

LaBute has written an often-exasperating play in which the shallow yell at one another about the superficial. Occasionally, hints of depth emerge, but then they’re gone again, shrugged off and swept away by salty invective.

Since “Reasons to Be Pretty” is the conclusion of a LaBute trilogy about obsession with physical appearance, how little we learn about this play’s four characters might be part of the point, as if what you see is intended to be all you get. But what you hear also has the potential for power, and that’s the jumping-off point for what story there is.

We’re dropped into the middle of an explosive, profanity-fueled argument between a youngish couple, Greg and Steph, spurred by a remark about her appearance. From there, we follow Greg as he goes through the stages of post-breakup recovery, receiving little or no support from a self-absorbed cartoon cutout of a co-worker and his security guard wife. Only when Greg and Steph engage for a pair of post-mortems on their relationship do we get a sense that something of value has been lost.

That’s when Joseph Bombard and Anna Sundberg give a taste of what could have been had the playwright started earlier in carefully crafting his words and coloring his characters. Overall, Bombard does a fine job with the bewildered Greg and Sundberg’s Steph becomes increasingly sympathetic after dispensing with her unhinged diatribes in the play’s first half.

But LaBute handicaps all four actors with a script that could have done so much more. The characters speak way too similarly as they bait, badger and declare themselves spokespeople for their gender. But what’s most troubling is how the writer conveys members of the American working class as if they’re driven by the simplest of motivations. He refuses to go deeper, leaving you with an unsatisfying play.

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